


Sacred Works

by Anam_Writes



Series: the things you can't read aloud at the war table [6]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Byleth is a soothing and motherly nymph, Claude is a grumpy goat man, Cunnilingus, F/M, Fauns & Satyrs, Horns, Marathon Sex, Oral Sex, Riding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:21:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24059665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anam_Writes/pseuds/Anam_Writes
Summary: The Earth is dying in Fódlan and only the Mother and Father of the continent can heal it. Holing up in a temple together after decades apart doesn't sound too bad at all, though. And their sacred work has always been the pleasurable kind...."The humans sprang from Fódlan like any other mortal," Byleth said. "They are her children as she is ours. I cannot hate them as you do."The shadow sighed. "I do not hate them. They are our family's problem child, however."Byleth smirked. "They take it from their grandfather."
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Series: the things you can't read aloud at the war table [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684297
Comments: 14
Kudos: 98





	Sacred Works

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexxir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexxir/gifts).



> That other gift prompty prompt I mentioned. Enjoy a sexy, grumpy goat DILF, hon!
> 
> Also, thank you to [Maddy02](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maddy02/pseuds/Maddy02) for being my awesome beta for this one!

“The earth dies,” wailed the people. “Her springs dry, her winds still, her flora wilts and her fauna starves.”

Byleth had heard the cry come from her people - whom she loved so well - although no single one had said so much. They cried for her daughter as she did, mourned her great illness. But her child worked in phases, long lived but not so eternal as her mother and her father. So, for Fódlan, a new beginning was in order. The time had come to rebirth her continent.

Though she grieved her poor child’s pain there was one joy in this. It had been too long since she had seen Fódlan’s father. 

“The way to the old temple is riddled with traps,” a mortal told her when she asked which road to take. “Some creature has taken claim there the last month. Bastard that he is, he’ll let none through. He says it is a private place, though the people need to pray to the Goddess now more than ever.”

She smiled at the child - for that is what he was, old and gray as he may be - and smoothed her hand over his brow. “Her springs will return, her winds will too, her flora shall bloom and her fauna shall feed. There is no need to fear, little one, so long as the creature is heeded.”

His forehead smoothed and his eyes lit. She could not help her amusement at the shake of the mortal’s head. She was strange to him, yes, but few could find it in themselves to not take comfort from her. It was a quality she’d been born to. 

“I can take you down the mountain pass, my lady,” the man offered. “There lies the valley with the temple you seek.”

“I will go on my own,” she said. “Worry not. Tell your people to plant their seeds in the dry earth. Bounty is coming.”

Byleth took the pass. Birds sang above as her trumpets. The deer, the hares, the mice, and all the prey of the forest with them, made up her procession. The foxes, the wolves, the bears made up her guard and her guide. 

The valley was empty. She descended from the pass into it, finding it as dust in an ornamental bowl. She’d have wept were there not still hope. She’d have ran had she not seen his traps.

She stood and she called. “Shall I be gated from my own home by your tricks?”

She had shuffled through the dirt in her bare feet this far but could not walk again for fear of the triggers he’d buried about. 

“Nay, welcomed, my love,” answered the shadow in the tall door. He shifted with grace to stand from leaning on the frame. The tap of his hooves on stone brought the warmth of memory to her mind. “They’ve kept the humans from here so that all would be ready for you.”

“You could shoo the children more kindly,” she sighed. “They fear you.”

“They should,” she could hear the frown. “Have you seen what these children have done to our daughter?”

Byleth’s gaze lowered to the ground. As though she could not have seen. As though she could sit atop the mountain of the pantheon and not watch while her child, the only one she had ever born, perished.

“I laboured a century to bring her forth from the water, to fill her with life. I need no reminders of the state of my creation,” she said. 

“And did I not nurse you while you laboured?” He asked. “Did I not leave the continent of my father to conceive anew with you? Have I not loved and nurtured the forests we planted and the plains that we made. Every hill, mountain and feature of the land I have cared for. Does that not entitle me to wish the land I sired well? May a father show no concern?”

"The humans sprang from Fódlan like any other mortal," Byleth said. "They are her children as she is ours. I cannot hate them as you do."

The shadow sighed. "I do not hate them. They are our family's problem child, however."

Byleth smirked. "They take it from their grandfather."

"Hah!" Came the exclamation, and with it the gust of wind. A breath from the continent to laugh at her father, even as he mocked himself. "Come in, my love, there is food and drink enough within and work to be done before the next age of plenty."

Work, as he said, needed doing. 

He stepped from the shadows of the temple. Proud and mighty though he was, her lover was less regal than she by the standards of men. She found him quite handsome, though she always did and always had. 

His legs were bent the other way round, like a goat's hind legs, and covered in a thick, soft coat of fur hide so dark it was nearly black. Under light of candles and the dawn and the dusk she had noticed before it reflected in deep, sultry brown - just as the hair of his head and his beard did. 

Well kept was said hair, slicked back atop him and trimmed round his jaw. He'd cared, too, for the line of short curls from the expanse of his chest to the dipping angle between his legs. 

She had followed that fertile trail many-a-times over the ages. They had enjoyed it together during their couplings since the first. 

His eyes shone green and his horns had grown even larger. It had been decades since she'd seen them last but the size, the growth, never ceased to impress. They were wide, sturdy and curved as a ram's. A sign of virility among the spirits and fawns of his kind to the east. 

They'd been small, once. Small enough that they barely poked out from messy curls, that she could place a circlet of flowers round his head and he could slot his head between her neck and shoulder when they made love in the mountains between the ocean that had once been and his father's kingdom in the forests below. 

Though even as she missed a simpler time when they were not the creators and gods of a continent and he had been boyishly handsome and soft beneath her, she desired him as he was now. Broad, strong, wild with eyes that sang songs of verdant fields and the madness of life reaching out to create, even with their own ends in sight. 

He came to her, her desire mirrored in him, and took her in his arms safely across the field of his traps. He laid her down in the large stone temple, a dozen times the size of the log cabin he'd first built there for her, once. This temple - which had once been a cabin, which had before been a patch of heather in the valley - held memories of sleep and love and joy. It was their favourite place in all the world. 

He was right; there was food and drink enough for them both. He had lit a fire at the central altar and laid out fur over a cot stuffed with heather. He had kept goblets and plates freshly filled in wait for her. She cherished his thought and rewarded his effort with the beginning of their works. 

The first day rain began to fall. She heard the first pitter patter of it as she writhed in the furs, her lover's tongue within her. 

"Do you hear that, Claude?" She said to him. 

He did not answer her or look up from his work. The sky opened with water for the continent to drink. She knew all across it would be covered in these clouds. She knew the people would scramble to interpret the omen. 

"Do you hear the rain?" She asked again. 

Claude groaned as her fingers twisted in his hair to pull him up. 

"Speak not of rain," he said. "Speak not of clouds or of thunder or of where lightning may strike. Let me please you, my love, and think only of that."

He delved back into her depths and, having heeded his earnest plea, she took him by the horns, pulling him further into her and riding out his tongue until energy flowed through them. 

"Claude!" She came with the god's name on her lips. And the sound of rain fell away from her ears. 

On the night of that first day, the Father of Earth took to the Mother and made her cry aloud as the wind howled outside.

The temple shook with the force of the gale and Byleth's legs clung tight around him. Her voice carried to the heights of the ceiling and Claude's hips faltered. 

"If this gaudy temple crafted by man should fall on our heads, love -"

"Has any structure upon our holy place ever fallen?" She asked. "Our love will fortify man's work. All that should fall is you upon me."

He took faith in these words and so their lovemaking went on.

With the morning came rest. Mist rose from the ground as heat from the sun struck what rainfall had not been drunk by the soil. 

The lovers partook of divine spirits that tasted of honey and poetry on their lips. They shared it between themselves on tongues entangled. They drank of each other between bites of bread and fruit. 

"Do you remember when first we met?" Byleth asked. 

Claude could not keep his smile from her. 

"I remember," he told her. "I remember the fright I felt when the sea foam became a woman on the rocky beach. I remember your hair dragged behind you and I spent hours braiding and pinning it with wild flowers for you feared my blade too much to allow me to cut it. I remember I made you a crown of lilies and we laid together in a bed of heather in this very valley."

"Do you miss my hair?" She asked. "I've cut it myself for centuries now."

"It was beautiful, but no," he softened. His fingers ran through pale jade waves. "I miss only that I may touch it and braid it and fill it with flowers."

"You could," Byleth said. "Every hour of every day, if you wished. If only you would take up with the pantheon in Garreg Mach."

To deny her was a task he dreaded. So, in its stead, the Earth Father kissed the Mother with all his tender care and asked, "what do you recall of me?"

"The way you used to dance," Byleth answered. "With any creature of the land you could find, you would dance. You would smile. I made you a crown of sunflowers and trimmed your hair so your horns would show through. You would wince when I touched them."

"They were sensitive," he laughed. "They tingled. I was not so powerful then, so they were not so large and sturdy.”

“They were sweet,” Byleth cooed. 

“You are sweet to say so.”

When afternoon came they wandered outside the old temple to stretch their legs. The grass grew back in patches and the sun shone bright above them through clear skies. The birds sang them love songs as they played in the valley, wrestling and chasing and dancing like they once had. 

“There’s a town in the shade of Garreg Mach,” Byleth said. “And the children often gather to play games at the foot. It is lovely to watch them.”

“It is lovelier to join,” Claude said. “I do not hate the children of Fódlan, not so much as you seem to think I do. They are inventive and the weakest among them are kind. Though the strong and the powerful cut our daughter into pieces and divy up those parts as though they are their own, though they draw strange lines in the earth and fight wars over their imaginary drawings of those silly lines, the young ones are wonders. I feel hope when I speak with them.”

“Do you speak with them often?” Byleth asked.

She reclined on the ground and came close when her lover joined her. She ran fingers through the hair of his chest and it brought with it the satisfaction of a kiss and a hum to her lips. 

“As often as I may,” he answered. “My life is lived on the road. The little ones do not know enough to fear me: strange creature that I am to some, vengeful Earth Father that others recognize me as. One taught me how to play marbles in exchange for teaching her to braid flowers into a crown. Another taught me how to use a loom if only I’d do a chore for him in town so he might play in the yard a while longer. Some get lost in the woods - oh, my love, how they cry! It would break your heart to hear it. They need to be guided back to their families, but some have none to go to. I try to find them new ones, if I can.”

“You’re a soft old goat,” Byleth gasped. “Soft and warm and so silly. It sounds very much like you love the children.”

“Of course I do!” He exclaimed. “But that does not mean I’m not very cross. The land works so hard for them and she gets nothing in return.”

“Perhaps I will come with you awhile,” Byleth said. “When we are done you’ll be back to your roads and your journeys. If I may, I’d like to join you.”

Claude smiled. The sun shone brighter still. “You may always join me. You are as welcome in my company as my heart is in my chest.”

When night fell once more, after having tumbled and napped in the sun, Byleth woke. She took Claude into the temple, gently by the hand and laid him back in the furs.

“One more night, my love,” she said to him. “We’ll beget an age of plenty and enjoy it with one another.”

She brought him into her with an ease and a comfort that came with ages spent practicing love like faith and intimacy like prayer. Astride the great wandering god she flowed still as a river before the boat hit rocky rapids. 

Beneath, her body fell to hard planes of muscle. Around her were large hands to grasp at her hips. To her eyes was the hungry gaze of green that had never - not once in all her life - ceased to glow with their wanting in her presence. Behind her, legs bent. She heard his hooves hit the floor and felt the leverage this brought him. 

His hide scratched at her bottom as she rode, leaving clear skin pink with impact and friction. The coil of muscle above his pelvis hit her bud, making her head fall back and her voice bloom from her mouth. 

“I enjoy every age I may spend with you,” Claude said. “Ages before Fódlan and after. Ages when our land thrived and when it wasted.”

He brought her into the rapids for the first time that tonight. Most certainly not for the last. Power furled in her gut, sent a pulse through her body that shook the temple. 

“I love you,” he told her.

The Earth mother cried. That night all the world could hear the age of plenty begin.

…

“Lady!” cried the old child. 

Byleth stopped for the mortal who had given her direction down roads that had not yet been built when last she had walked to her oldest temple. 

“Ah, it is you! I thank you for your help before,” she gave him a nod. 

Her man stood to her right, smiling as the mortal bowed to the Mother. He was dressed as he did to pass through human cities, loose pants and a tunic. With any luck his glamour worked to disguise his horns. 

“You owe her your bows, yet why do you do so, child?” He asked. 

“The crops have grown a full season over a single night!” said the man. “She urged us to plant them. It is a miracle from the Earth and a blessing from the sweet lady.”

Claude grinned wider. 

“She is brimming with life today, is she not? Treat her well. Now, go, go, go on your way,” Claude shooed the old child and walked, hand in hand with Byleth, back up the mountain. 

“What shall we do first in this age of plenty?” Byleth asked, flowers blooming from her heels as she walked. 

“I say we find a field of flowers,” Claude said, hop returned to his step. “I wish to braid your hair.”


End file.
